November 4, 2021 was the date of the “Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2.0” was released, giving the games a major update. After that, there was nothing. A few tweaks, but no promise of anything major. Players assumed that Nintendo had given up on the game and were not planning anything big.
Five years later, Nintendo shocked “Animal Crossing” fans with the release of “Animal Crossing: New Horizons 3.0” on January 14. Here are some of the big things added and some of my thoughts after playing the new update for two weeks.
The first major thing in the update is that there is now a hotel connected to the docks on players’ islands. In this hotel, players can have four to five new villagers roam their island. I honestly love this because after a month of playing, seeing the same villagers that live on my island gets boring. When I see the same eight villagers makes the island feel less like an island resort like the game intends to be.
These villagers trade out daily and it is a lot of fun seeing different villagers I have never seen before.
In the hotel, the player earns hotel tickets by building up bare rooms into places that villagers can stay in. These tickets can be used in the souvenir shop to buy furniture and clothing.
Building the rooms is quite fun, especially since the game allows players to choose the themes of the rooms so they can decorate how they want. I will say, taking furniture out of the provided catalog can be quite time consuming due to players not being able to place more than a couple big items around the rooms at a time.
After players complete all eight rooms, the hotel head, Leilani, explains to the player that they can make a VIP room. This room has a larger selection of theme options, but resets every day. So a design a player makes one day will not be there the next. These VIP rooms go to visiting villagers that get lost on the island and ask the player for help.
Due to the rooms resetting, I feel like it can get quite annoying after the first few times. The mechanics to placing furniture can be a bit clunky.
Outside of the hotel is a box where a player can insert predecided DIY items that they make to earn hotel tickets. This is an easy way to get tickets and most of the recipes are fairly easy to obtain. There is even a specific tab in the DIY workbench for a player to see the items needed in the box.
Speaking of DIY, making things has become 10 times easier. Many players know about the pain of needing specific items from their house. They have to run to their house to grab the item, then run back to their workbench to craft the DIY object one at a time. It is a slow and grueling process and ruins the desire to DIY. Nintendo has fixed this.
Lastly, when a player wants to terraform the mountains of their island or create paths, it can be hard to keep the controller straight, which leads to messing up and having to redo actions. This can get time consuming the more mistakes happen. Nintendo has fixed this problem. When a player holds the L bumper, their player jumps into place, like a soldier at attention. If a player keeps hold of the bumper, they can move the character using the joycon. The character will move, but only in the cardinal directions. This provides the player smoothness and makes building easier.
I tested this feature out a bit and I really enjoy it. Making sure the bumper is held down is an annoying task, but overall, I really liked experimenting with this part of the update.
There are plenty more things to check out in this update. More details can be found on Nookpedia.
